MASSACHUSETTS
Reuters
BOSTON | BY SCOTT MALONE
A former Massachusetts priest who figured prominently in the Roman Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal and pleaded guilty in 2002 to raping a child will be released from prison after prosecutors dropped their effort on Friday to send him to a state facility for sexual predators.
Ronald Paquin, who was defrocked in 2004, was one of the first arrested amid revelations that members of the Catholic clergy had sexually assaulted children and that bishops had covered it up.
Paquin, who had served in Haverhill, pleaded guilty to three counts of raping a child, beginning in 1989 when the child was 12 years old.
He completed his sentence earlier this year but prosecutors in Essex County, Massachusetts, north of Boston, had tried to have him declared a “sexually dangerous” person who must be confined. Two qualified examiners interviewed Paquin and reviewed his case and concluded that he posed no threat.
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